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> They basically built out the features and waited until their competitors made some strategic mistake,

Microsoft Word was a loser, but then they changed out the operating system under the winners.




Yes, but the winner also refused to get with the times and embrace the operating system twice. First, they were abysmally slow to Windows 3.1, despite having years to get something together (in part b/c they understood that Microsoft wanted to win at word processing but they underestimated the importance of being on the OS anyway) and then a few years later with Windows 95.

Word Perfect had the OS changed from under them but also had every warning that the change was coming and refused to move to sturdier ground.


That's too bad.

It was pretty easy to write off Windows 3.1, and continue to be a solid solution on MS-DOS and with Netware, etc.

But Windows 95 had a lot of fanfare in advance that suggested it would have much better uptake. And Windows NT in parallel was developing a credible foundation, and it got the "new shell" as an option around the time of Win95. My recollection at the time was that the writing should've been on the wall, that Windows was going to be the Microsoft platform.

If WordPerfect was slow to move, that's a bad combination with, er, not as direct of access to the platform teams.




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